Rabin, Yitzhak

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Yitzhak Rabin

Born on March 1, 1922 (Jerusalem, Palestine)

Died on November 4, 1995 (Tel Aviv, Israel)

Prime Minister of Israel

First as a soldier and then as a statesman, Yitzhak Rabin devoted his entire life to the Jewish nation of Israel, and participated in the decisive battles that won Israel's independence in the late 1940s. Rabin became the Israel's first native-born prime minister and he struggled to secure Israel's existence as a nation, developing a close relationship with the United States and seeking opportunities to negotiate peace with Israel's Arab neighbors.

"The debate goes on: Who shapes history—leaders or circumstances? My answer to you is: We all shape the face of history. We, the people... ."

Born to Zionists in Palestine

Yitzhak Rabin was born in Jerusalem, in British-controlled Palestine, on March 1, 1922, the first of the Rabins' two children. Rabin grew up in Tel Aviv, where his father, Nehemiah Rubitzov (he took the name Rabin before marrying), worked at the Electric Corporation and his mother, Rosa, worked as an accountant. Rabin's parents both felt strongly about the importance of community service and volunteered their time to a variety of public causes including Zionism, the belief in the creation of an independent Jewish State. They had met in 1920 while defending a Jewish section of Jerusalem against an Arab attack.

During his youth Rabin was taught that collective agricultural settlements, called kibbutzim, were essential to the goal of securing a homeland for Jews. Although Rabin had grown up in a city, he decided to study agriculture in order to help establish such settlements. He entered the Kadouri Agricultural School in 1937, where he learned farming techniques. He also learned how to use weapons, in order to defend Jewish settlements and schools that were sometimes attacked by Arabs angry at the number of Jewish people living in Palestine. Continued riots between Arabs and Jews, and then the start of World War II (1939–45; war in which Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, the United States, and their allies defeated Germany, Italy, and Japan) interrupted Rabin's education, but he eventually graduated and won a scholarship to study at the University of California at Berkeley. Although he hoped to continue his studies at some point, he turned down the scholarship because, as he wrote in his memoirs, "I was simply incapable of leaving the country, and my friends, during wartime." This decision changed the course of his life.

On guard for Israel

During World War II, Rabin lived on a kibbutz, where he worked as a police officer. He became especially skilled at setting ambushes to stop Arab attacks on his community. Haganah, the underground military force of the Jewish Agency (the governing Jewish organization in Palestine), soon took notice of Rabin. In 1941, when Haganah established a mobilized force named the Palmach (which was a Jewish acronym for "assault companies"), Rabin was among the first to be invited to join. He knew Jews would have to fight for their homeland, and agreed without hesitation. From 1944 to the creation of Israel in 1948, Rabin worked full-time in the Palmach. He rose quickly from foot soldier to battalion leader, to chief of operations by 1947.

Although Palmach had coordinated some of its missions with the British army during the war, by 1945 it began working against the British in order to save Jewish immigrants. During World War II, millions of Jewish people were put to death by Nazis, the German government led by Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) which attempted to take over large parts of Europe and to rid Europe of Jewish people and other non-Aryans, or white non-Jews. Many Jewish people tried to escape the Nazis by immigrating to Palestine, but many were denied entrance by the British due to pressure from Arab Palestinians. Rabin assisted in operations that freed hundreds of Jews from British holding camps before they could be sent back to Europe.

At war's end, the fate of Palestine rested in the hands of the United Nations. On November 29, 1947, the United Nations voted to partition, or divide, Palestine into two separate nations: one Jewish and the other Arab. This triggered a six-month period of violent conflicts between Jews and Arab Palestinians, which led to the War of Independence. The War of Independence started with the creation of the Jewish nation of Israel on Palestinian land in 1948, which prompted the Arab nations of the Middle East such as Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, to attack the newly created Jewish state. Rabin participated in all of the most decisive battles of Israel's War of Independence in 1948, and directed a campaign that drove Arabs back from the Negev desert. He also participated in the armistice, or ceasefire, negotiations between Israel and Egypt that led to the war's end in 1949.

With Israel's declaration of independence in 1948, the Palmach was absorbed into the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), the nation's new army. Rabin steadily rose through the ranks of the newly established military, and by 1959 he was appointed to the second-highest post in the IDF, chief of operations, and achieved the top position of chief of staff in 1964.

Rabin had just reorganized the IDF when Israel became immersed in a war in 1967. With new weapons from the United States, and newly organized defensive and offensive sections, the IDF was prepared to defend Israel. The IDF, however, learned of attacks planned against Israel and instead of waiting to defend the country, Rabin and the IDF went on the offensive. On June 5, 1967, Israel started what would be called the Six-Day War, a conflict between Israel and the nations of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, during which Israel nearly tripled its original size. During the war Israel regained access to the Western Wall, a monument in Jerusalem that Jews had lost during the War of Independence in 1948. "The Wall was and is our national memento of the glories of Jewish independence in ancient times," Rabin was quoted in Michael Kort's Yitzhak Rabin: Israel's Soldier Statesman. He went on to say: "Its stones have a power to speak to the hearts of Jews the world over.... For years I secretly harbored the dream that I might play a part not only in gaining Israel's independence but in restoring the Western Wall to the Jewish people, making it the focal point of our hard-won independence. Now that dream had come true, and suddenly I wondered why I, of all men, should be so privileged. I knew that never again in my life would I experience quite the same peak of elation."

A Politician in the Making

The military success of the Six-Day War enabled Rabin to turn his attention to other ways in which he could serve his country. He became Israel's ambassador to Washington, D.C., in 1968, and moved with his wife, Leah, and son, Yuval, to the United States. (His daughter Dalia remained in Israel to complete high school.) Rabin had decided to become an ambassador because it "was the job I thought I could do best," he remembered in The Rabin Memoirs. As tensions between Israel and its Arab neighbors, especially Egypt, rose in the late 1960s, Rabin proved an able diplomat. He was a strong voice for Israel when it participated in peace negotiations. At the same time, Rabin never lost sight of Israel's immediate needs. During Rabin's tenure in the United States, Egypt waged a war of attrition (small, harassing attacks) against Israel in an attempt to win back land lost during the Six-Day War, and Israel needed outside help. Speaking with U.S. president Richard M. Nixon in 1970, Rabin, according to his memoirs, described Israel's position in blunt terms:

Whenever the U.S. is believed to be reducing her support for Israel, the Arabs revive their old hope of overcoming us by force. And the longer the war of attrition goes on, the more the Soviets will flaunt their insolence. They will interpret the United States' decision on arms as a sign of weakness. And if the Russians can station SAM-3s [Soviet missiles] and man them with their own technicians while America continues to deprive Israel of arms, they will take it to mean that they can go even further! Once again, Mr. President, I appeal to you as the only man in whose sympathy and understanding we have trust: Give us the arms we need!

During his five-year term as ambassador, Rabin worked diligently and successfully to secure good relations between Israel and the United States. He made U.S. president Nixon a close friend. After Rabin's last meeting with Nixon, the president told Israeli prime minister Golda Meir (1898–1978; see entry), "If you don't need him in Israel, you're welcome to leave him here! I'll be glad to have him!" Rabin recalled in his memoirs. The relationship Rabin built with the United States would serve his country well in the coming years.

Israel's first native-born prime minister

In March of 1973 Rabin returned to Israel. He was soon elected to a seat in the Knesset (Israeli legislature) and was appointed minister of labor in March 1974. At the time of his appointment, Israel was in the middle of the Yom Kippur War, a conflict started in 1973 by a surprise attack from Egypt and Syria. Controversy surrounding Israel's military failures and devastating loss of life at the beginning of the war prompted Prime Minister Golda Meir to resign. In April 1973 Rabin was elected to his first term as prime minister. Rabin's election as prime minister was a historic moment, for he was the first native-born Israeli prime minister. However, Rabin inherited many problems when he took over for the country was at war and his political party had been damaged by its inability to either reach a peace or win the conflict.

During his tenure as prime minister from 1973 to 1977, Rabin worked to revamp the country's tax code, develop the economy in order to increase job opportunities for the waves of immigrants moving into the country, and deal with terrorist activities from the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and other Palestinian groups. He also tried to secure peace with Egypt. By 1975 Israel and Egypt had reached an interim agreement for peace, but Rabin determined to hand over control of Israel to another politician before a peace treaty would be finalized.

Rabin did not intend to withdraw from public life when he decided not to run for prime minister in 1977. Scandal forced him from office (see sidebar on next page), but he remained active in the Knesset and slowly rebuilt his political reputation. He relied on his military expertise to become a trusted consultant on matters of Israel's security. He was often called upon by government officials as well as the press for his expert commentary. By 1984 Rabin was once again appointed minister of defense, a post that earned him the nickname "Mr. Security." In this position Rabin dealt with the violent uprising of Palestinians called the First Intifada, brought on by Arab Palestinians living in Israeli territory who felt that Israel was treating them inhumanely, or cruely. To suppress the uprising, Rabin supported Israel's military use of "force, might, beatings," as quoted by Naomi Pasachoff in the book Links in the Chain. But he did not view violence or war as the ultimate solution to Israel's problems. He once wrote, of the conflict with the Palestinians, that "there is neither moral right nor practical benefit in the illusion of the efficacy of force to attain fundamental political objectives or conclusive political solutions to the Arab-Israeli conflict in the Middle East," according to Yoram Peri in the afterword to The Rabin Memoirs.

In 1992 Rabin won election to a second term as prime minister. In the first year of his tenure, fighting between Israelis and Palestinians increased. Official negotiations held in Washington stalled, but secret talks between Israeli and Palestinian officials in Oslo, Norway, were a success. In September of 1993, Israel formally recognized the Palestine Liberation Organization, and Rabin shook the hand of PLO leader Yasser Arafat (1929–2004; see entry) on the White House lawn in Washington, D.C., on September 13. Israel's recognition of the PLO led to the Oslo Accords, a set of agreements forged in 1993 between Israel and the Palestinians that gave Palestinians limited self-rule in the Gaza Strip and West Bank under the governance of the newly created Palestinian Authority. For their historic efforts, Rabin, Arafat, and Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres (1923–; see entry) shared a Nobel Peace Prize in 1994.

Savings Scandal

In 1977, just months before national elections, an investigative newspaper report revealed that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and his wife had not closed their jointly held American bank account when they returned to live in Israel after Rabin's tenure as Israeli ambassador to Washington, D.C. At the time, Israeli law forbade Israelis from holding foreign bank accounts. The offense was viewed as a technicality by Rabin's supporters, for the account contained just a few thousand dollars and was only used by Rabin's wife. But it was seen as an enormous mistake by his political foes, who criticized him severely. Although formal charges were levied against his wife, Rabin publicly took joint responsibility for the wrongdoing. To show his shame, Rabin took a leave of absence from the office of prime minister and announced his decision not to seek reelection that year. The Rabins paid a fine of 250,000 Israeli pounds, more money than was in the account, to settle the matter.

Support for peace in the Middle East continued. On October 26, 1994, Rabin signed Israel's second peace treaty with an Arab country, Jordan, to end forty-six years of war between the two nations. At a peace rally on November 4, 1995, one hundred thousand Israelis gathered in support of Israel's "land for peace" plan, which called for Israel to withdraw from some of the lands it had acquired during the Six-Day War in 1967 and allow Palestinians to govern themselves. Rabin spoke to the crowd, a speech that was reprinted on the Yitzhak Rabin Center for Israel Studies Web site, saying that "violence is eating away at the foundations of Israeli democracy. It must be condemned, denounced, and isolated. It is not the way of the state of Israel....This rally must send a message to the Israeli public, to the Jewish people throughout the world, and to many, many in the Arab world and the world at large, that the people of Israel want peace."

The message the world heard was mixed, however. As Rabin made his way from the podium to his waiting car, a twenty-five-year-old Israeli law student named Yigal Amir stepped from the crowd and shot Rabin. Rabin slumped in the back seat of his car as his driver sped to the hospital, but doctors were unable to revive him. Yigal Amir later admitted that he killed Rabin because he felt that the peace that Rabin was creating in the Middle East would eventually result in the creation of an independent Palestinian nation that would one day threaten the existence of Israel. Rabin is remembered in Israel as a soldier-statesman who opted for peace over violence as an answer to the many problems between Israelis and Palestinians.

Hawks vs. Doves

In times of conflict, and especially war, politicians are often described as either hawks or doves. Hawks take aggressive approaches to conflicts, advocating for war. Doves generally oppose war in favor of negotiations and compromise. Yitzhak Rabin served as an example of how these terms may describe a person's opinions or actions at a certain point in time, but are not good descriptors for a person as a whole. During the First Intifada of the late 1980s, Rabin instituted what he called the "iron fist" policy, to quash the uprisings. Kort wrote that it was Rabin's hawkish reputation as "Mr. Security" that he had earned during his military career and as minister of defense that won him election as prime minister in 1992, adding that Rabin's "reputation counterbalanced the general public's view of Labor [Rabin's political party] as dominated by leftist and dovish politicians [who] would give away too much and compromise Israel's security in negotiations with Arabs."

Rabin proved to be both hawk and dove. He worked to secure Israel's security using both military might and political diplomacy. Rabin explained to a crowd on the day of his death, reprinted on the Yitzhak Rabin Center for Israel Studies Web site, that he "waged war as long as there was no chance for peace." But on that November day in 1995, Rabin said, "I believe there is now a chance for peace, a great chance, and we must take advantage of it." It remains up to Rabin's successors to take advantage of their opportunities for peace.